Tonight on our local news there is a 17 year old who robbed a number of churches and few quick marts. The Judge sentenced him from 10 to 30 years behind bars...

On the next note a grown man who molested a 10 year old girl got 5 to 10 years and has to register under megans law...

WHAT are we thinking in this country...Yes the boy was bad and should do some kind of time and make restitution but he may be able to be rehabilitated..But I am sure while he is in prison he will learn how to be a better thief who will no way be able to live in our Community again because he wont know how to...

The child molester will probably get out in two to three years and go on molesting more children until one day he murders one...

My God America what have we become...There are too many laws to protect these child molesters in this country...What do we do with them..? Hang em high..? Send them off to a secluded Island in the middle of nowhere..? We cant let these pediphiles walk our streets and prey on our children...

Just my opinion, but the sentence for the robber may have been a bit harsh considering his age. I have no problem with several years, but 10-30 for a 17 year old could be a bit excessive. But as for what I think is the main point of your post, that being pedophiles, the minimum should be life without parole. The maximum - the death penalty. In the former case (the robber/vandal), rehabilitation may be possible. But as far as I'm concerned, someone who molests kids can't be rehabiltated, despite all the shrink-speak.

At the local Walmart one of the employees was going around with his cell phone taking pictures of rear ends of the women he found attractive. I thought he must have been taking upskirt shots or something but no, it was just photos of their clothed rear ends. He admitted to doing it 20 times and that it was for his sexual gratification (talk to a lawyer first next time loser).

Okay this is wrong and no doubt he should be fired but he is also facing up to 10 years on a felony charge for "improper photography." Seems excessive to me for what he did! Guess I better start noticing whats in the background of my photos before snapping the shutter from now on.

May have been a gun involved in the robberies. Some states have mandatory sentencing [5-10-20 years] if a gun is used, if the gun is fired, if somebody is injured/killed the penalty goes up. Florida has that kind.

Johan .. Im with you on the child molester (ever notice just add a "N" and monster is in there) short rope would be cheap and could be used again , I was thinking of someone that is a good shot and a cheap but deadly bullet.

someone that steals from a church is the worst form of human to me , here is an organization for which the intention is to help all people and some one steals from it and everything in it is provided by its members. This happen to my church and i felt like they stole from me and also God. I would agree that 10- 30 years is excessive for a 17 year old , maybe said young man should have to serve 30 days of community service in said church and hopefully the sinner could be changed.

Before anyone puts the 2 paragraphs above together and goes huh that don't add up . The 1st paragraph is the flesh or sin nature of me the 2nd is the Christ in me, hopefully as a christian the 2nd paragraph will become 100 percent of me someday.

But even Jesus him self hated harming the young , so maybe i'm in good company

"It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck than to face the punishment in store for harming one of these little ones." Luke 17:2

According to my training as a state trooper conducted by a police phycologist if a child molester is over 25 they WILL re-offend. The compulsion is so strong that they know it thenselves.

After a prison riot I was assisting the corrections officers while repairs were made and the investigation was completed. I was warned to be carefull around one inmate a trusty who was a child molester. He was in his 60s and looked like a storybook grandfather. He was soon to be parolled. He hit a corrections officer with a mop handle after apologizing for hitting him so that his parol would not go through. He knew if released he would re-offend.

On the youth some information of his past record may explain the severe sentence.

The young thief with (presumably) a gun has a chance for rehab (although, after a stint in prison, I doubt it). I'll go with jharold--the sex offender, especially the child-molester, doesn't offer the same promise.

Given that "molester" is a broad category and that it might be relatively easy to earn the label by hugging a child enthusiastically (and photographing women's bums perhaps doesn't qualify), I'll suspect that we can all agree that there is a horrible line that, when crossed, entitles the perp to be forever separated from society. As I am not in favor of the gummint paying for his sustinence for the rest of his (or her) life, I'd be in favor of ending that life as soon as the guilt is established without reasonable doubt. I kinda like the guillotine--a bit messy, but every bit as painless as a lethal injection. (Cruel? Because he must live in dread of knowing when he is going to die? What he did to deserve the sentence was far more cruel in that his victim has to live with his action. Payback! Let the punishment fit the crime. )

As for forgiveness, I'll go with Johan Steele: I can let Christ sort that out--I want the guilty perp gone forever, one way or another.

In my checkered journalistic past, I covered several child molestation cases and never did I have any sympathy for the man (and it was ALWAYS a man) who did it. That said, I can't see executing someone for what surely is a heinous crime. Putting him away for the rest of his life, OK (and I don't mind paying for that Ole, so I'll pay for your share), but to inflict the ultimate punishment for this is a bit harsh. In the first place, I can't believe that too many people would seriously choose to become a molester. If it's true that the compulsion never leaves, doesn't that make it a sickness? Our society doesn't have to love someone who is sick, but I can't see that we have the right to kill him.

Oh, and just for the record, I support capital punishment for convicted killers, so I'm not anti-death penalty.

Booklover,
I can see your point but I dont want to support this guy for the rest of his life on my paycheck either. What the issue actually is, is not that we can kill or punish this man for the rest of his life but how do we get the Judges in Our New America to keep him in jail so he does not go on molesting more children. Put yourself in the shoes of the Parents who child has been molested by some sicko that has just been let out of jail for his last offense of molestation and has now got your child in hand..Scary thought, is it not..God is the Ultimate Judge of such things but we need laws to keep this guy behind bars without costing the taxpyer more and more money for parole hearings..I dont believe a child molester can be rehabilitated because it is a wierd kind of sickness that medicine cannot help. Education will help by informing children what to look for and what not to do and what to do
but that only goes so far..A big man and a small child are no match for each other..We need laws to keep these perverts behind bars forever. If someone molested one of my grandchildren I could not stand by and watch what is going to happen to him in our Court system..I would want to choke him to death, even if it is a sickness he has because he just inflicted that sickness on my grandchild...

I also can see your point and if I had children and one was molested, I would want to kill the bastard myself. That is also why we don't allow vigilante justice in our society. I have to have enough faith in the system, which I will grant you is in many instances horribly flawed, that the punishment will be given. Of course there are those who are released who do the crime again and I would have no problem with a "three strikes and your out" type of punishment, although I wouldn't necessarily allow three strikes.

On the news today there was a story about a college girl who gave birth, allowed her baby to drown in a toilet and then threw it in a dumpster in a garbage bag. I don't think anyone would argue that she has some mental illness (even temporary) that allowed her to kill a helpless infant that she had just given birth to. So, do we kill her or put her in prison for the rest of her life because she hurt someone who could not fight back, or do we try to get her treatment to make sure it never happens again (and maybe in the process try and understand why it happened in the first place)?

I'm not enough of a psychologist to say whether it's possible to reform molesters or if some type of medical castration might reduce their drive but I also know that anyone who would commit such a violation has to suffer from some mental disturbance.

Despite having the John C. Frémont avatar, I come from the George B. McClellan school of personal philosophy: moderation, self-restraint, compromise and rational consideration (it's a daily struggle, I must confess). So I look aghast at the vigilantism and barbaric forms of punishment proposed in this thread. Might as well get out the pitchforks and do some witch burning, too, if we're serious about rolling back the gains of civilisation.

When it comes to classifying a crime, especially for the purposes of punishment, I ask only one question: did the crime involve physical and/or emotional violence against another person? If yes, then punish severely with a long sentence (including life for murder or attempted murder); if no, then try to seek an alternative to a prison sentence, such as community service, fines or something more creative. For the most serious of non-violent crimes, a period of confinement may be necessary and desirable, but in this case do not place these criminals in the same prisons as violent criminals. Violence has no place in a civil society, and our justice system must clearly reflect this.

The other interesting aspect of this thread is the apparently unanimous belief that we should treat child molestors more severely than other violent criminals. I am against this purely emotional (or evolutionary) response. To me, a 28-year-old father is just as human as a 65-year-old grandmother, and a 38-year-old single man is no less valuable than an 8-year-old girl. We are all equal: black or white, old or young, rich or poor, tall or short. The only rational conclusion I can come to is that the punishment of a violent crime should not have anything to do with the identity of the victim; we should be solely focused on what intentional harm was done to the victim by the criminal.

ijontichy wrote: Despite having the John C. Frémont avatar, I come from the George B. McClellan school of personal philosophy: moderation, self-restraint, compromise and rational consideration (it's a daily struggle, I must confess). So I look aghast at the vigilantism and barbaric forms of punishment proposed in this thread. Might as well get out the pitchforks and do some witch burning, too, if we're serious about rolling back the gains of civilisation. There is a school of thought that moderation, self restraint, compromise etc have caused many of the problems in our society... I am tempted to agree. Is hanging a barbaric form of punishment? In my mind it fits the crime and is in fact far too civil for a child molestor. In my years of historical research I went through a period of studying different cultures various criminal punishments. I have come to the conclusion thta our justice system is one of the most lenient and least effective in history. I have dealt w/ those who have survived sexual child abuse & rape and their lives were forever scarred. The offenders were sent to prison for a few years and returned to society... how many offended again? Perhaps the problem is that too many of those offendors are coddled, they're just victims themselves of coarse... posh. They are a drain upon society and a step backwards in civilization and deserve no pity and no mercy.

When it comes to classifying a crime, especially for the purposes of punishment, I ask only one question: did the crime involve physical and/or emotional violence against another person? If yes, then punish severely with a long sentence (including life for murder or attempted murder); if no, then try to seek an alternative to a prison sentence, such as community service, fines or something more creative. For the most serious of non-violent crimes, a period of confinement may be necessary and desirable, but in this case do not place these criminals in the same prisons as violent criminals. Violence has no place in a civil society, and our justice system must clearly reflect this. Violence must be dealt with by harsher violence to give the offender the distinct idea that his evil was a bad idea... otherwise what is the message? Coddle him into goodness and light? The road to hell is paved with good intentions and I believe that saying fits our current legal system that gives the criminal more rights than the victim. Last year I dealt with a child, a 2 year old boy who was the victim of a monster, that monster did not kill the child but he destroyed the childs mind. Kid is blind, brain damaged and cannot eat except through a feeding tube in his stomach. What kind of prison sentence do you suspect he received... 5 years. The child has perhaps 70 years to live with what was done to him. Our prisons today coddle the inmates far too much, I'm a blunt man and believe that their is no crime worse than rape or child abuse. Yes, I do believe them worse offenses than murder because of what they force the victim to survive, and I readily admit this likely has to do w/ knowing several of the victims. It is true that in out society there are offenses worse than death... and those that do them are coddled. And when I say coddled in this instance I mean they survive to do so again.

The other interesting aspect of this thread is the apparently unanimous belief that we should treat child molestors more severely than other violent criminals. I am against this purely emotional (or evolutionary) response. To me, a 28-year-old father is just as human as a 65-year-old grandmother, and a 38-year-old single man is no less valuable than an 8-year-old girl. We are all equal: black or white, old or young, rich or poor, tall or short. The only rational conclusion I can come to is that the punishment of a violent crime should not have anything to do with the identity of the victim; we should be solely focused on what intentional harm was done to the victim by the criminal. A child molestor is not a human being, they are something else, something considerably less. I call that a reasoned look at their kind from knowing some of the victims; no medical treatment exists to cure them. They are at best a drain upon humanity at worst a waste of oxygen. An 8 year old child is not the same as a 38 year old... the 8 year old cannot defend itself from a child molestor. I agree the punishment of the crime should have nothing to do w/ the race, religion or creed of either the offender or the victim and it should reflect the crime. Rope for a rapist, a bullet in the neck for the murderer. Drug dealing... might as well be dropping rattlesnakes into a schoolyard I understand the medical research community needs some test subjects or perhaps Death Valley needs a new road. The white colar crime... incarceration at a work camp; I understand we have roads in need of new ditches.I'm a simple man w/ simple ideas of justice. All the high faluting holier than though "treatments" and "reasoning" of how those who ravish our most precious commodity can be redeemed... crap. I am willing to provide the rope because I understand it is important to be able to put your actions where your mouth is.

John Cooey is a prime example of a man(?) who has forfeited his right to remain alive--even in the stark and meager conditions of a gulag. His value remains only in his pitiless example of disregard for Jessica Lundford's right to grow up.

I think the majority would agree with you...It never seems like much until it hits home and it is your child or grandchild that one of these monsters gets their hands on. There are many sicknesses out there that do not do harm to other people..Child molesting is not one of them. When I see these things on the news that a local teacher was caught with child porn on his computer it makes me all the more peeved that this type even got into our education system and is working with small children. As I stated before there may be a way to rehabilitate a thief, and a thief may molest your personal property but he is not molesting children who cannot defend themselves. Whatever it is in the brain that makes these people do this cannot be cured or rehabilitated as far as I am concerned. Look at past history with these people they go to jail and get out only to do it again and again..There is no reason to let them walk back onto our streets. A child molester is none other than a rapist who preys on children who have no chance and to me that is the lowest life form we have on earth. If the punishment was more severe for this crime I think these people would think twice before engageing in the act but are laws are to forgiving because we have become a Nation who thinks the death penalty in wrong and that we do not have a right to take someones life no matter what they have done and that is why these types of crimes still continue to flourish in this Country.

There is a school of thought that moderation, self restraint, compromise etc have caused many of the problems in our society... I am tempted to agree.
In fact it's just the opposite that contributes so greatly to the problems of modern society. Extremism (the opposite of moderation) is currently rife in certain religions, ultimately causing the deaths of many thousands of people worldwide. Self-restraint, a personal quality that used to be held up as an ideal, has now been replaced by a selfish or short-sighted lack of restraint, leading to all sorts of social problems including drug addiction and street crime. Compromise is the oil that helps the machine of our political systems run smoothly, stopping strident and divisive policies from being implemented, and it applies equally well to the personal realm, too (of course, there is such a thing as too much compromise). And finally, rational consideration, the one covered by your "etc" ... well, it is what keeps our society from degenerating into barbarism.

Yes, I do believe them worse offenses than murder because of what they force the victim to survive, and I readily admit this likely has to do w/ knowing several of the victims.
What if you knew the child abuser? For the sake of argument, what if your own eighteen-year-old son (a shy & awkward lad, with few friends, never had a girlfriend) in his role as supervisor of a church-youth-group camping trip sexually abused a ten-year-old girl under his charge? Would you be willing to "provide the rope" in this case? To turn a commonly used argument on its head, why should I take your answer seriously if this situation (or something like it) has never happened to you? Until it does (of course I hope it never does), maybe I should ignore your opinion on the matter. Do you see the point I'm trying to make here? I'm not purposely trying to provoke you.

A child molestor is not a human being, they are something else, something considerably less.
On the contrary, they are human, all too human. Murder and abuse is part of human nature, it is part of your generational lineage. There is no society or moderately-sized group of humans in recorded history that has been free from it. This may be a disturbing fact to consider, but there is no real excuse to shut your eyes from it. What we can do as a society is try our best to minimise it. One way to do that, I advocate, is to sharply distinguish between violent and non-violent crimes in our justice system, particular the way we punish crimes. But I already touched on this in my previous post. Another way is to reinstall the values of moderation, restraint, temperance, and politeness that have been wiped away by the modern era of indvidualism.